[QUOTE=Darryl Lict]
Was that the 101? If it is, your ex was the first I’ve heard about. I was always wondering if those warning signs were just BS with the intention to fool people into compliance on those long stretches of empty highway. Personally, I’ve never seen a plane tracking that highway.
[/QUOTE]
It was the 101 on the way from SB to the Bay Area to see The Dead.
[QUOTE=MadPansy64]
I have no idea about any other situation in any other state. To be fair, the ticket was for doing 90 mph in a 65 zone, which is just a bit more serious than an expired parking meter. It’s not a criminal offense – or at least has never shown up as such on any background checks – but it was a moving violation.
Paging lawyers or traffic cops to tell us the Straight Dope on this, please.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not a lawyer, but I’ll be getting my law degree in about three months.
A citation is a summons. Offenses for which you get a citation are called “violations”; these include minor violations of traffic laws, liquor laws, pure food laws, etc. Violations are at the bottom of the criminality spectrum, with misdemeanors in the middle and felonies at the top.
As for whether you can be arrested for driving 90 in a 65 zone, that will be a matter of state law. In many situations, police officers have discretion over whether to issue a citation or to arrest (so be nice to cops). Your jurisdiction probably has some kind of threshold at which that discretion kicks in; to make up a random number, maybe it’s “20 mph above the limit.” Or, come to think of it, it’s probably “anything at all above the speed limit, if certain other factors are present.”
There are “schedules” of punishments and fines for various offenses; no violations carry prison sentences, as far as I know. I can’t imagine a situation in which you could be arrested and jailed for a parking violation, unless you were parked in front of a fire hydrant while the orphanage burns. (Even then, the parking violation isn’t what you’d be jailed for.)
A parking ticket could certainly lead to an arrest, if you made a scene and yelled at the meter maid and got unruly and attacked her. Or if, in the course of writing you a ticket, she saw a bag of weed or other contraband sitting in plain sight in your vehicle or something.
I know there’s at least one PD on the boards who will have a better grasp of all this than I do; I haven’t studied much in the way of criminal law.
FWIW, I knew a guy in college who got pulled over while driving something over 100 on the Interstate (back when the speed limit was 55 everywhere), and was arrested and taken to jail.
[QUOTE=hajario]
It was the 101 on the way from SB to the Bay Area to see The Dead.
[/QUOTE]
Heh. I won’t really worry about it until I own a car that can actually break the speed limit. Actually, I have found out that the 4Runner will do at least 79mph (I thought it’s top speed was 74mph), according to the friggen’ cop in Salinas.
How was Bobby at the Ventura Theater, by the way?
A friend of mine was late for work, so he hopped on 50 from Rancho Cordova, CA, to Folsom, CA. His car was speedy…
He figures he probably hit about 110 at the max, as he was trying to get to work within the limit so he wouldn’t have a ‘failure to show up’.
He got to his work, jumped out of the car and logged in. Then he went back to the parking lot to go park his car. When he got there, there were 3 cop cars in the parking lot, and a cop looking inside his car.
They asked him if it was his.
“Nope, not mine. What’s wrong?” he said, thinking quickly.
“Oh, we’re gonna tow it and impound it,” replied the cop, thinking quicker.
He confessed, and they said that they had him at approx 115-120 miles an hour, based on a chopper that happened to see his speedy little car on the road.
He intended to fight the ticket, though I don’t know whatever happened with that particular case.
Early 80’s. I was driving in mid-Ohio, speeding, daydreaming. Cessna in the air. 85 in a 65.
Speeding tickets? Those signs say the speed limit is enforced by aircraft, but they don’t say nothing about issuing tickets.
But the aircraft are armed.
I was driving up to see the Tour of California in Solvang with a friend today, so I asked him if he knew anyone who got a ticket by airplane in the aforementioned “Air Monitoring zone” on the 101. He said, same as Hajario, that he got a ticket in the mid 90’s on this stretch of highway. He said there were 5 CHiPs in rotation systematically pulling over cars.
He speculated that they don’t really do it anymore because of the ridiculous high cost of implementing such a system. I mean, you are flying a plane, with dedicated CHiPs in order to issue $100 speeding tickets. The governator is probably not condoning such behavior.
[QUOTE=Darryl Lict]
How was Bobby at the Ventura Theater, by the way?
[/QUOTE]
It was great. Way better than I expected. I won’t hijack this thread anymore but I’ll send you an email in the next couple of days.
[QUOTE=Darryl Lict]
He speculated that they don’t really do it anymore because of the ridiculous high cost of implementing such a system. I mean, you are flying a plane, with dedicated CHiPs in order to issue $100 speeding tickets. The governator is probably not condoning such behavior.
[/QUOTE]
If it is consistently keeping multiple officers working that prolly $400-$500/hr in tickets per officer. That should keep a plane, officers, and plenty of bureaucracy aloft.
[QUOTE=hajario]
I was a passenger in a car driven by my ex-wife through Central CA in the mid-90’s when we were pulled over by a CHiPy. He pointed up to a circling Cessna and told us that the plane caught us speeding.
[/QUOTE]
As I mentioned before, my understand is that it has to be confirmed by ground units. They get their speedomers calibrated and checked by weights/measures so they can get speed by pacing or they also carry doppler gear that if they have a clean view of you, can measure differences in relative speeds, so he can get your speed even if you are both moving. The plane probably pegged you as a speeder, but the speed was probably verified by the cop on the ground. This also avoids confusion WRT similar vehicles being observed from 2,000 feet up, was it the silver 07 Camry or the Silver Lexus ES300 losing ground behind him.
[QUOTE=ASAKMOTSD]
I have witnessed this happening in Ohio, just outside of Dayton. Mass production - cop standing in the middle of the highway, taking direction from a police chopper, signaling car after car to the side of the road where a whole row of troopers were waiting to write the tickets. Quite a production.
[/QUOTE]
I live in Dayton.
I received a ticket on I-70, east of Dayton (between Dayton and Columbus) and was told by an irate, and quite rude, State Trooper that aircraft clocked me at 90 in a 65 zone.
An expensive ticket.